Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Grumman F-14D Tomcat Version 2.25 Release

All, given I will not have much time in the next few weeks, here is an update to the F-14D project. There are still many bugs and inaccuracies, but, well, in the end it is still better than the previous version IMHO. The file can be downloaded from the link on the side bar of this blog.

- Added support from AIM-54 Phoenix on STA 1B and STA 8B (Token weight is 1024lbs)- Fuel tanks are now removeable. Presence is controlled by the weight on Station_load.11 (for STA 2) and .12 (for STA 7). Token weight is 381 lbs.- Fuel tanks can be jettisoned in Tacpack via the EMERGENCY Jettison button.- Fuel tanks are functional, through the Doug Dawson's fuel dump gauge. Uninistalling/dropping the tanks will immediately eliminate the fuel in the "External Tank" slot. Upon reinstalling the tanks, they must be refilled manually. - TACPACK Weapons configurator rewritten from scratch, new graphics and more configurations available- Minor improvement in the rendering of afterburners- Minor improvements to autopilot logic (it still has many problems unfortunately)- Revised transonic drag and engine performance at high altitude/high Mach no. (transonic wave is still low, but overall engine performance should be closer to the real deal)- Fixed aicraft description in manus- Fixed cockpit lighting issues- Fixed few bugs in the MFD keypress logic (still apparently FSX cannot detect some mouse areas, which seem to work in P3Dv2)- Improved NACES textures- Added digits to Airspeed indicator for both Indicated Air Speed an Mach No.- Added digits to Altimeter for both Altitude reading and Barometric setting- Added AUTO and MAN mode for Air to Ground Ordnance release- Added support for Pre-Planned (PP) targets. Note that the next Navigation Waypoint is designated as PP target, but in many instances the NAV computer updates the WP too fast. The function can still be used to upload the next WP to the current target, by switching back to TOO mode.- Added DUD cue for bombs release in TACPACK (flashing cross in CCIP mode - flashing DUD cue in other modes)- Rewritten Tacpack code in order to get rid of weapon accuracy bug in the previous release. Note: bug was not clearly identified and may still be there, weapons accuracy has not been tested.- Rewritten Tacpack Air Refuel code, now should support a realistic fuel transfer rate (UNTESTED FEATURE) - Fixed bugs in AoA Indexer (not transitioning correctly between lights)- Added IFF Mode 4 TACPACK "Friend" CUE to A/A (will flash "FRIEND" cue in the HUD only, in A/A mode, if L&S target is positively identified as FRIEND - UNTESTED FEATURE)VERSION 2.20 - Fixed accuracy of several analog gauges

16 comments:

I have just spotted a mistake in the release note (bad translation from Italian - as we have the "double negative" phrases): Prepar3D V2.1 hotfix 1 SHOULD be installed to get rid of few minor incompatibilities. They are very minor things anyway. Post has been fixed.

Very very cool! I was an aircraft mechanic at NAS Oceana in the 1990's and worked on these birds every day! Love your model, Dino! Only one issue, and it's a pretty significant one. The wingsweep control should start to sweep the wings back at mach .55, not mach .35 They're beginning to sweep way too early and its quite unrealistic.

The tomcats wing sweep is automatically controlled by its on board computer, which sweeps the wings one way or the other depending on the speed of the aircraft,altitude, its attitude in flight, and the amount of energy the aircraft is bleeding off. It has no pre-determinned set speed for wing sweep.

@JiriI will check the glove vanes animation... it should not be like this. They should deflate automatically...

@Jiri and JackThe wing-sweep logic has been under scrutiny several times during this project.

First thing to be said is that the wing-sweep logic is clearly detailed in the flight manual (NAVAIR-F14AAD-1 Paragraph 2.20- very easy to find with Google).What we built into the Tomcat should be close to the sweep-schedule given in AUTO mode, electrical command path, Channel 1, <14000ft - within a 0.05M error. As it is it only depends on Mach No.

It is completely possible to program an exact wing sweep schedule in FSX...but that is relatively more complex to do. We could think to adding altitude as a variable - above 20000 ft, the sweep starts later and is very few degrees up to Ma0.7).

Well, as far as I can tell the download link is OK.Please note that Google Drive has bandwidth limitations (reset daily) - so a large file with many downloads may saturate it easily. So, if you are unlucky, the download may be inhibited.Situation will get better in the next few days.

Anyway, I will update the project soon - the new version will be also uploaded to the usual repositories.

Hey Dino, can you obtain permission from Iris and modify there Ex-payware now free Mig-29 package?? Change the effects, bump mapping (so it shines in fsx) and also the flight dynamics and other things and let it be available from your blog here??

Air refuel code has been completely remade in the latest version in order to implement a proper fuel flow rate (much slower than the previous iteration)... but the code has not been tested.

As for the AIM-54, there is a bug in the Tacpack code (which I hoped it was solved but apparently is not) - thing is the missiles report their ranges for NON-lofted trajectories, regardless if they are commanded to "loft" or not. AIM-54 achieves his range through an extremely lofted trajectory. It is possible to shoot and hit targets at 40-50Nm (depending on speed and aspect), provided you have a missile lock. In short, disregard the reported missile range as it is inaccurate.

This is a new version of the F-35 project that improves the freeware version in several areas including new visual models, additional avionics functionalities (with TFLIR, DAS and ASR imaging support) and new flight dynamics.

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